Kickstarter Picks: Sword of Fargoal 2

With the advent of services like Kickstarter, it’s rare for anything in video games to die. If some developer is in love with a concept or genre that flamed out 20 years ago, chances are they can pitch a revival and find a group of people interested enough to throw money at them. This concept holds true to specific games as well, as we’ve seen with the Kickstarter campaign to create a new Wasteland. And then there’s Sword of Fargoal 2, a remake of a game that came out over 25 years ago.

The original Sword of Fargoal was a dungeon crawler for the Commodore 64 (remember that thing?). Its floors were randomly generated, and the endgoal was to navigate a dungeon and locate the “Sword of Fargoal.” It was one of the first games of its kind, and it went on to inspire many of the Rogue-like games released in the years ahead. It was also incredibly difficult, even by retro standards.

The game was revamped a few years back for Mac and iOS, and it was met with quite a bit of praise. But the original’s many fans quite vocally deemed this remake as not enough, and the original developer, Jeff McCord, is turning to Kickstarter for the funds necessary to reboot it once again.

This new version is already 80% complete, but McCord and co. require additional revenue if they want to implement suggestions they’ve received from fans, as well as new weapons, items, animation, music, graphics, a procedural map, and more. It’s shaping up to be a fan’s dream come true, as well as the perfect chance for those who never played the original to see what all the hype is about.

Rewards for donations include the game itself (surprise, surprise), a download of the soundtrack, behind-the-scenes content, plushies (if the stretch goal of $87k is hit), t-shirts, and all sorts of other memorabilia. I’m confident the game will hit its goal well before the deadline, but we should all work together to reach that stretch goal of $87,000. Plushies, you guys. Plushies.

Kickstarter Picks is a series of features on Gamezebo that will profile Kickstarter projects in the world of video games. We’re doing this in the hopes of calling attention to interesting projects in need of funding, so please, if a game looks like something you’d want to play, don’t hesitate to lend it your support!